Open AccessDescribing the Breakbone Fever: IDODEN, an Ontology for Dengue Fever
Author(s) -
Elvira Mitraka,
Pantelis Topalis,
Vicky Dritsou,
Emmanuel Dialynas,
Christos Louis
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
plos neglected tropical diseases
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.99
H-Index - 135
eISSN - 1935-2735
pISSN - 1935-2727
DOI - 10.1371/journal.pntd.0003479
Subject(s) - dengue fever , interoperability , ontology , computer science , toolbox , data science , open biomedical ontologies , principal (computer security) , data mining , world wide web , medicine , ontology based data integration , computer security , suggested upper merged ontology , virology , semantic web , philosophy , epistemology , programming language
Background Ontologies represent powerful tools in information technology because they enhance interoperability and facilitate, among other things, the construction of optimized search engines. To address the need to expand the toolbox available for the control and prevention of vector-borne diseases we embarked on the construction of specific ontologies. We present here IDODEN, an ontology that describes dengue fever, one of the globally most important diseases that are transmitted by mosquitoes. Methodology/Principal Findings We constructed IDODEN using open source software, and modeled it on IDOMAL, the malaria ontology developed previously. IDODEN covers all aspects of dengue fever, such as disease biology, epidemiology and clinical features. Moreover, it covers all facets of dengue entomology. IDODEN, which is freely available, can now be used for the annotation of dengue-related data and, in addition to its use for modeling, it can be utilized for the construction of other dedicated IT tools such as decision support systems. Conclusions/Significance The availability of the dengue ontology will enable databases hosting dengue-associated data and decision-support systems for that disease to perform most efficiently and to link their own data to those stored in other independent repositories, in an architecture- and software-independent manner.